Holiday Wine, with You and Me [Chaennie ]

Part 2 : Donning the gay apparel

Jennie Kim is fearless.

As CEO of multinational conglomerate K-Corp, she has destroyed men's careers — and occasionally their marriages — with little more than a single critical glance. She strikes billion dollar deals (after, fine, months of careful deliberation — she may be brave but she's not a fool) with a bold-yet-graceful stroke of her favorite fountain pen. Jennie Kim is a force to be reckoned with: someone who sees what needs to be done, and then sees to it that it is.

Jennie Kim is freezing, and she is not going to forgo another hour of sleep just because she doesn't want to risk disturbing the woman in the bed beside hers.

Wincing at the stiffness in her shoulders, Jennie rolls over and glances blearily over at the woman in question. Rosie is sprawled belly-down in bed, her face turned away, shoulders rising and falling in an enviably relaxed rhythm. She's an oblivious Cerberus to Jennie's Eurydice, the chest of extra blankets at the foot of her bed the only way for Jennie to escape her frigid torment.

So Jennie takes the type of breath she usually reserves for entering a hostile boardroom, pulls her quilted blanket tightly around her shoulders and flings her body forward blindly, reaching the source of her salvation in two frantic, graceless hops.

The chest is empty.

So this is how it ends, after all, with Jennie dying of hypothermia-induced sleep deprivation on the side of a mountain at the tragically young age of thirty-three. She spares a thought for the family of possums that will go hungry this spring, now that she will perish inside this icebox masquerading as a luxurious log cabin instead of at the side of the road, as originally intended.

Maybe Rosie can make a meal of her, instead.

Jennie can see her more clearly, now; the pale light passing through the curtains casts a silver luster on the skin of Rosie's arms and shoulders, accentuating the sort of muscle definition Jennie has only ever seen on the flexing fuckboys at the K-Corp gym. It takes her an embarrassing amount of time to realize, with a sort of confusion that borders on rage, that Rosie has pushed her own covers down, her careless comfort forming an audacious contrast to Jennie's suffering.

Rosie is hot.

Right, obviously, but also, and much more pertinently, hot in the sense that she doesn't need the blankets she's so thoughtlessly cast aside. Hot in the sense that it wouldn't be a problem if Jennie took one for herself.

It's perfect.

Driven by the realization that she can no longer feel her bare feet on the hardwood floor, Jennie grabs for the blanket that has been kicked down to Rosie's hips and tugs, internally high-fiving herself for finding such a tidy solution to her problem.

But before she can claim her bounty, the woman beneath it stirs.

"Jennie?" Rosie is blinking up at her, mortifyingly awake, eyes black in the darkness. "What's wrong?"

"I'm sorry," Jennie whispers, embarrassed, remorseful, "I was trying not to wake you. I'm just— so cold, and you're obviously not, and it didn't look like you'd mind if I—"

"If you climbed in with me? No, of course not," Rosie says, as if it isn't the most preposterous suggestion ever made.

What, Jennie tries, and probably No, of course not, don't be ridiculous, but her voice catches on a violent shiver. Her body has registered the heat rising from Rosie's own and is directing her toward it without her permission, goosebumps prickling up from the back of her neck to the tops of her toes.

"Come here." Rosie moves over to make room for her, looking like she's already half asleep again. All of her blankets are now tucked securely under one perfectly sculpted arm, and Jennie bites her lip — first at the lost opportunity, and then at the bizarre-yet-dangerously-tempting option of actually getting in beside her.